Begrudgingly Olga got up from the table and noisily took the ironing board from its crevice between the cooker and the store cupboard. Searching for an attack point, she said: ‘The cuffs are frayed: the left one, at least. You need more shirts: shall I look while I’m choosing nightdresses?’
Danilov didn’t want to fight. ‘The fray won’t show.’
Abruptly, confusingly at first, she said: ‘Would it have hurt: what happened to the girl last night? Would it have hurt?’
‘Horribly.’
‘I’ll definitely get a taxi.’
Danilov supposed he should have warned Larissa, as well. He’d have to remember to do so.
The hum was discordant, high and low, high and low, without a tune: it was good to hum. He liked it. It was noise: noise was safe. Not always, of course. Not just before it happened. Noise was dangerous then. Had to be quiet, like a shadow. Only safe to hum afterwards. Like now. They said it was an indication to hum, all those experts, but they were wrong. About humming anyway. He wasn’t mad. The opposite. Clever: always clever. Clever enough to know all the signs but stop them showing.
The hair had this time been more difficult to tie neatly in its tiny, preserved bunch, like a wheat sheaf: kept slipping out, before the cord was properly secured. All right now. A neat, tidy bunch — always important, to be neat and tidy — with the top cleanly trimmed completely flat. Perfect match with the other one. It had been right to take the buttons. She’d been a woman: got it all right last night. Especially the buttons. A neat and tidy pattern, red ones and green ones and a brown one, all assembled in their perfect arrangement on the special souvenir table, together with the hair-clipping scissors. Always had to have buttons, from now on. And always a woman then. Important to plan for the future, always to stay ahead. The knife had to be sharpened, stropped like a razor, to slide in like silk. That was the good part, the way the knife slid in. Just like silk. That and buttons. Felt happy, to have got the buttons. There’d be the challenge, soon: a hunt. There had to be a hunt. That was going to be the best part: what he was looking forward to. Look, fools, look! But they never would. Not properly. Just a little longer, touching the souvenirs. Holding them. Exciting, to hold them. Then put them away. Safely, for later. Another one soon. Always women, from now on. And buttons.
Chapter Three
Pavin drove the car, drawn from the Militia pool. He did so meticulously, as in everything else, observing all the signals and keeping strictly within the speed restrictions. He did not, however, attempt to use the central reserved lane, which they could probably have done as an official car on official business, automatically waved through every possible junction obstruction by the GAI police in their elevated glass control boxes, like goldfish out of water. Not that there had been obstruction: it had been nearly ten o’clock before Lapinsk returned the authorizing call to go to the American embassy, so the morning traffic had cleared. As they made their way towards Ulitza Chaykovskaya, Pavin said the house-to-house inquiries hadn’t found a single witness. He was still trying to work out how many extra officers it would need to carry out the search of psychiatric hospital records: it would be a lot.
‘Novikov is being ordered to do the autopsy immediately,’ said Danilov.
‘That’ll annoy him.’
‘Everything annoys him,’ dismissed Danilov.
They turned into Chaykovskaya, towards the embassy. Pavin nodded ahead and said: ‘It’ll be difficult for me to keep a proper record, without the language.’
‘We’ll stay in Russian,’ Danilov decided. ‘If the man we’re going to see doesn’t speak it there’ll be an interpreter.’ Lapinsk had arranged the meeting with someone named Ralph Baxter, a Second Secretary. From the diplomatic lists he’d already studied, Danilov knew nearly everyone was described as a Second Secretary.
‘You’re not going to tell them?’ Pavin smirked, appreciatively.
Danilov had read English, with French as a second subject, at Moscow University: just prior to graduation he had considered a career utilizing linguistics but the Militia had a better pay structure, more privileges and inestimably more practical benefits for an easy life, so he hadn’t pursued the idea. Occasionally, watching on television interpreters at the shoulder of Russian leaders on overseas summits, Danilov regretted the decision. Interpreters didn’t get woken in the middle of the night to look at dead bodies, for one thing. He said: ‘Not at the beginning: it might be useful, being able to understand what they say among themselves.’ Be careful at the embassy. He thought the potential advantage outweighed any later recrimination.
The uniformed Moscow militiamen on duty outside the American embassy had clearly been alerted to their coming by Militia Post 122. They were deferentially admitted through the main entrance and directed by a secondary guard of American marines from an inner courtyard to the right of the mansion. The door they approached was mostly glass. The reflection was distorted, but Danilov decided he’d been right about the haircut: the greyness wasn’t obvious at all now. The mirrored image made him seem smaller, too, dwarfed by the ponderous Pavin behind. The only advantage was that he also looked slimmer, with no hint of the developing paunch about which both Olga and Larissa mocked him, one more gently than the other. The suit looked smart but it was only just a year old, one of the few genuinely bought articles after the halcyon period heading a Militia district.
There was a reception desk where Danilov identified them both and asked for Ralph Baxter by name. The American appeared at once, a slight, quick-moving man with rimless spectacles and a moustache that seemed too big in proportion to the rest of his features. His shirt collar was secured behind the knot of his tie with a pin: Danilov had seen Americans wearing that style on television and wished such shirts were available in Moscow. He would have been happy with any sort of clean shirt that morning.
Baxter said: ‘Dobrah’eh ootrah’ in badly accented Russian and offered a weak handshake. He turned at once to a man who had followed along the corridor and said in English: ‘Will you ask them to come into the office?’ To the receptionist Baxter said: ‘Warn Barry we’re on our way.’
The translator was intense and young, leaning forward when he spoke and carefully picking the grammar and the intonation. Danilov guessed it was the man’s first posting, after language school.
The corridor was buffed to a highly polished sheen and the walls hung with prints of American pastoral scenes. Halfway along there was a large plant in a tub, the wide green leaves almost as glossy as the floor all around. Baxter halted at the far end and stood back, gesturing the two Russians ahead of him. Danilov concluded it was not a working office at all but an interview or conference room. Another man rose at their entry. His hair was thinner than Danilov’s. He wore a double-breasted sports jacket, a hard-collared shirt with a club tie and sharply creased trousers: the impeccable appearance was completed by highly polished brogues. Barry, guessed Danilov, from what he had overheard in the foyer.
‘My colleague,’ said Baxter, offering no further introduction.
There was another nod but no handshakes.
Baxter indicated chairs set against the table: the Americans placed themselves in a facing half-circle and Baxter said: ‘We have been told this is a police matter. Serious. Possibly involving an American national.’
The intense young man’s translation was completely accurate. Pavin took out a notebook and prepared to write. The American in the sports jacket did the same.
Danilov outlined the finding of a young woman wearing American-labelled clothes earlier that morning, saying nothing about the shorn head, the buttons or the shoes. ‘Has any American employed here failed to turn up for work this morning?’